Digital Marketing: latest News from the World – December Part 1
Welcome to our blog, where innovation meets strategy in the dynamic realm of digital marketing! In this post, we’ll examine the latest developments and emerging trends that are transforming the digital landscape. From recent updates in social media algorithms to AI-powered marketing techniques, these changes offer exciting possibilities for brands and marketers.
Get ready to learn how these advancements can revolutionize your campaigns, broaden your reach, and boost your ROI. We’ll analyze the key developments shaping the future of digital marketing, offering detailed insights to help you stay ahead in this rapidly evolving field. Don’t miss this comprehensive look at the current trends and news that are at the forefront of digital marketing!
Artificial intelligence
Problems with ChatGPT search
ChatGPT was already a threat to Google Search, but ChatGPT Search was supposed to achieve its victory, as well as being an answer to AI Perplexity. But according to a study recently published by Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, ChatGPT Search is struggling to provide accurate answers to its users’ queries.
The researchers selected 20 publications from each of three categories: those that partnered with OpenAI to use their content in ChatGPT search results, those involved in lawsuits against OpenAI, and unaffiliated publishers that have allowed or blocked ChatGPT’s crawler.
Forty of the citations were taken from publications that currently use OpenAI and have not allowed their content to be scraped. But that didn’t stop ChatGPT Search from confidently hallucinating a response anyway.
“In total, ChatGPT returned partially or completely incorrect answers on one hundred and fifty-three occasions, although it only acknowledged an inability to accurately answer a query seven times,” according to the study. “In those seven results alone, the chatbot used qualifying words and phrases such as ‘appears,’ ‘it is possible,’ or ‘could,’ or statements such as ‘I could not locate the exact item.'”
ChatGPT Search’s cavalier attitude toward telling the truth could damage not only its own reputation, but also the reputation of the publishers it cites. In one test during the study, the AI misattributed a Time story as being written by the Orlando Sentinel. In another, the AI linked not directly to a New York Times article, but to a third-party website that had copied the news article wholesale.
OpenAI, as expected, argued that the study’s results were due to Columbia getting the tests wrong.
“Misattribution is difficult to address without the data and methodology that the Tow Center withheld,” OpenAI told Columbia Journalism Review in its defense, “and the study represents an outlier test of our product.”
The company promises to “continue to improve search results.”
DIGITAL Marketing
More online sales on Black Friday than in 2023
Black Friday 2023 has been a catalyst in the transformation of e-commerce, setting a new standard in online sales. This record reflects the power of SEO and digital advertising strategies, as well as retailers’ ability to adapt to an increasingly digital environment.
The impact of e-commerce on Black Friday
Black Friday 2023 has marked a milestone in e-commerce, reaching a record $10.8 billion in online sales in the U.S., according to Adobe. This phenomenon reflects emerging marketing trends and the shift to digital platforms, driven by SEO and digital advertising strategies.
The rise of e-commerce
The notable increase in online spending during Black Friday underscores the acceleration toward e-commerce, a trend that has gained momentum over the past decade. The convenience of online shopping, coupled with the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has led more consumers to opt for digital platforms over physical stores. This shift is a clear example of how Marketing News is evolving to adapt to new market realities.
Key drivers of growth
- Mobile shopping: Mobile devices have played a crucial role, with a significant portion of purchases made via smartphones and tablets. This phenomenon reflects the growing reliance on mobile technology for shopping convenience.
- Early promotions: Retailers began offering Black Friday deals earlier than ever before, extending the shopping season and encouraging consumers to start their holiday shopping early.
- Variety of products: Electronics, apparel, and home goods were among the top categories driving sales, as consumers sought deals on high-demand products.
- Improved user experience: Retailers have invested heavily in improving their online platforms, offering seamless navigation, personalized recommendations and secure payment options to enhance the shopping experience.
Consumer behavior outlook
- Increased purchasing power: With the economy showing signs of recovery, consumers have demonstrated increased purchasing power, contributing to overall sales growth.
- Sustainability and ethical purchasing: A growing number of consumers are prioritizing sustainability and ethical considerations in their purchasing decisions, influencing the types of products they choose to buy.
Future outlook
Record Black Friday sales are a promising indicator for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Retailers are expected to continue to leverage digital platforms to capture consumer interest, with Cyber Monday and the weeks leading up to Christmas likely to experience robust online sales. For more information on how these trends are shaping digital marketing, you can visit Marketing Trends.
Adobe’s report on e-commerce spending during Black Friday highlights a pivotal moment in the retail landscape, as digital shopping becomes increasingly dominant. This trend is expected to persist, with retailers and consumers adapting to the evolving digital marketplace. As technology continues to advance, the future of shopping promises to be more connected, convenient and consumer-centric than ever before.
Artificial intelligence
Amazon launches Nova: An ecosystem of AI models designed to revolutionize marketing
Amazon has taken a significant step in the artificial intelligence race with the launch of Nova, its new family of AI models. Designed to combine high performance and affordability, Nova is being phased in through AWS Bedrock, marking a milestone in automation and creativity.
A family of purposeful models
Nova is organized into two main categories:
- Foundational models: focused on textual and multimodal tasks for advanced comprehension.
- Creative models: Innovative tools for image and video generation.
Each model is designed to fit a variety of business applications, from marketing to complex data analysis solutions.
Key Nova Capabilities
- Nova Micro: Specializing in text processing in 200 languages and capable of handling up to 128,000 tokens.
- Nova Lite: Offers multimodal interaction (text, images, videos) with accurate text responses.
- Nova Pro: An advanced multimodal model designed for complex tasks such as TextVQA.
- Nova Premier: In development and scheduled for 2025, this model will focus on complex reasoning.
Creative tools for industry
- Nova Canvas: Generates high-quality images with advanced editing options, ideal for advertising campaigns.
- Nova Reels: Allows the creation of videos of up to 6 seconds in high resolution, optimized for marketing and digital entertainment.
Amazon has implemented strict mechanisms to protect intellectual property and ethical use of AI. In addition, all content generated will include watermarks to ensure transparency in its origin.
A boost for business and advertising
Thanks to its visual quality and video consistency, Nova outperforms existing models, consolidating itself as a valuable tool for marketing, advertising and entertainment.
Infrastructure and expansion to the general public
Built on the robust AWS infrastructure, Nova inherits a proven track record in AI, supporting leading companies such as Apple. Amazon also plans to expand Nova to mass consumption, possibly integrating it into Alexa with a subscription model, although it still faces technical challenges.
With Nova, Amazon is redefining the AI landscape, offering tools that not only automate tasks, but also inspire creativity and business efficiency.
SEO
Google Clarifies: When to Use Noindex and When to Disallow in your SEO Strategy?
In a recent YouTube video, Martin Splitt, a developer and advocate at Google, shed light on a topic that generates quite a bit of doubt among SEO managers: what is the difference between “noindex” and “disallow”? While both are powerful tools for controlling how search engines interact with a website, they serve very different purposes. Using them correctly can make the difference between a flawless SEO strategy and one that is full of pitfalls.
When to use “Noindex”?
The “noindex” tag is basically a sign that tells search engines, “You can look, but don’t take it”. It is implemented in the HTML section of the header of a page via robots meta tags or via the HTTP X-Robots header.
What is it for?
It is ideal when you want search engines to access the page, but you don’t want them to include it in their results. For example:
- Thank you pages: that typical “Thank you for your purchase!” doesn’t make sense to be in Google.
- Internal search results: They don’t provide value to the user coming from a search engine and might even confuse them.
Simply put, it’s your option to say, “I don’t want this page to show up in Google, but you can check it out.”
And when to use “Disallow”?
On the other hand, the “disallow” command, set in the robots.txt file, is more like a physical barrier. It tells crawlers, “Don’t go past here, this area is private.” This prevents search engines from accessing certain URLs or even URL patterns.
When to use it?
Sensitive information: Private data, user folders or any content you want to protect.
Pages irrelevant to SEO: For example, pages with temporary scripts or internal directories.
In short, “disallow” is the perfect tool to make sure that certain parts of your site don’t even enter the search engines’ radar.
Frequent Mistakes: Don’t Combine “Noindex” and “Disallow”.
A common slip-up, and one that Martin Splitt highlighted, is trying to be overly cautious by combining both methods on the same page. If you block a URL in robots.txt with “disallow”, search engines won’t be able to crawl that page. And if they can’t crawl it, they won’t be able to read the “noindex” you put in the meta tag either. The result: that page could end up appearing in the results, but only with basic data such as the URL title. A misapplied solution can end up being a headache.
So, rule of thumb:
- Use “noindex” when you want the page not to appear in the results, but allow search engines to review it.
- Use “disallow” to completely block access to that page.
Google Tools and Tips
To avoid misunderstandings and configuration problems, Google offers a specific tool in Search Console: the robots.txt report. With it, you can check how your rules are affecting crawling and indexing.
Finally, as a key recommendation: understand the differences between these two tools, use them in the right contexts, and you will have an optimized site that works as you planned. Because, at the end of the day, SEO strategy is not just about attracting traffic, but attracting the right traffic.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
artificial intelligence
Google introduces its AI for video
First announced at Google I/O 2024 in May, the Mountain View giant makes official that Veo, its AI feature for generating videos, will now be available in Vertex AI as a preview. “It is capable of generating high-quality content from simple text or image prompts,” with a wide range of cinematic and visual styles. Like Sora, its advanced understanding of natural language and visual semantics will allow it to generate extremely realistic videos that respond perfectly to user requests.
At the Google I/O 2024 conference, the company presented new generative AI models. It debuted Veo, a new video generator, and revamped Image 3, the text-to-image conversion AI.
What’s new
“Veo’s technique can be a great ally to human creativity, allowing creators to focus on higher-level tasks while the AI manages the tedious or repetitive aspects of video production,” reads Google’s note accompanying the launch of its new generative AI.
But that’s not all: on the occasion of the launch of Veo, an updated version of the text-to-image generative AI, Image 3, was also announced. It is still a tool capable of generating images and videos, to which the big tech adds new functionalities such as photo editing from text, or the possibility of adding logos or products to images. Obviously, all content produced by Veo and Imagen 3 will be accompanied by an invisible digital watermark designed to “reduce the problems of misinformation and misattribution”.
Everything seems to indicate that Google is not only anticipating OpenAI’s launch of an AI capable of generating videos of comparable quality to film footage, but is also making an effort to demonstrate adequate support to companies, so that they will trust their skills and hand over a large part of their content production activities, without incurring copyright infringement.
Latest Tech and Digital Marketing Updates
📌The most downloaded apps in November. In Spain in first position Pokémon TCG Pocket, followed by Bluesky (the new X competition) climbing 30 positions in the list and ChatGPT. Globally: TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp.
📌Freepik presents Tunes. Described by themselves as “the easiest way to add great music to a video”. You can download music, create custom international voiceovers and add sound effects.
📌Advertising on ChatGPT? Apparently not, for the time being. The CFO says they are focused on current growth, and the CEO, Sam Altman, says no to ads for worsening the user experience. He only sees them as a last option.
📌New competition for ChatGPT. Alibaba has launched QwQ-32B-Preview, an AI model with 32.5 billion parameters, which outperforms OpenAI’s o1 in some sections.
📌They look out for their users. TikTok has announced that all filters that modify people’s appearance will be removed for those under 18. The goal: to prevent the impact on the self-esteem of the youngest.
📌One year you are brutal and the other a fiasco. And is that although the very famous Spotify Wrapped 2024 has improved the experience with the integration of a podcast powered by AI that offers personalized recommendations, this year’s has not liked at all.
📌Threads tests a way to hide your replies on your profile. The app offers more control over the privacy of shared content. A useful tool to manage brand image without losing interaction.
📌Instagram activates replies in broadcast channels, which encourages direct and more personal communication with followers. An advantage for anyone looking to improve community engagement and offer more interactive content.
📌TikTok introduces new ways to raise money for charities. Social interaction and audience loyalty that strengthens your relationship with your community, while contributing to a good positive. Win-win situation.
📌Apple releases new feature. Allows password synchronization between Firefox and Windows. Security and user experience improved. And managing credentials more efficiently has a direct impact on customer loyalty, so nice.
📌Just Eat partners with Toys R Us, allowing users to order food and toys in one click. This partnership not only attracts a new audience, but also opens up new ways to combine products and services.
📌A ChatGPT with ads. Elon Musk is developing a version of ChatGPT that will include ads. If implemented, this would open up new monetization possibilities, which could be key to integrating AI into advertising strategies.
